Fear is quite a topic, isn’t it?
Every human knows fear. It is how we are built. But how the seven billion people experience fear is quite different for every single one of us.
What we fear is dependent upon us and our past experiences. There isn’t a “global” fear about any one thing, I think. Probably the closest one might be death. But even then, a lot of people don’t fear it. They just aren’t looking forward to it, so much.
And certainly, we all don’t have Anatidaephobia.
If you are not sure what that is, neither was I. But Anatidaephobia is the fear of being watched by ducks.
Oh, yes. I’ve been to the pond. I’ve seen those folks with my own eyes. You can pick them out right away, typically the ones with the bags of bread crumbs. They throw the crumbs as a distraction for the ducks so that the birds look at the bread, not the person. Very tricky. The downside occurs because those same ducks start following the person, asking for more bread, only exacerbating the problem.
This fear of being watched by ducks really got rolling some time ago. But people frequently talk about it in certain threads on social media.
But. Here is the thing. If you look this up in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (or any other edition), you won’t find anatidaephobia.
That’s because Gary Larson coined the word in his comic The Far Side. So the actual name of this particular phobia? It was a joke in one of Larson’s thoughts.
But apparently, it has taken hold. According to PsychCentral: “People who experience this phobia may not necessarily be worried that a duck might attack them. Instead, their fear centers around the idea that somewhere, a duck could be watching them — constantly.”
So, perhaps the people who pull out their christening swords and give names to phobias should approve of this one. PsychCentral also noted that the fear of birds is a genuine thing for people. Ornithophobia. And as they pointed out, ducks are birds.
The thing that Larson pointed out in his cartoon, though, is that people can have a fear of anything, from spiders to sharks. Or from high places to tight spaces.
I used to have all sorts of fears a couple of decades ago. But over time, they have faded, and I no longer hold those apprehensions. These days, I can pick up snakes, and all sorts of bugs, including spiders. I like mice. I can stand in a high place, and I love to fly. Years ago, these things were foreign matters to me because of fear.
Fear, that unpleasant emotion, all because we hold a belief that a “thing” is dangerous. Sometimes, those things can be hazardous. Like being afraid of standing on a high cliff. People have been swept off of high cliffs by hefty breezes.
But many times, the “feared outcomes” are unlikely to happen. The snake won’t bite us. The dentist isn’t that bad. And that duck probably isn’t staring.
Then again.
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“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
— Rudyard Kipling
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“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
— Seneca
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“There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t.”
― Lemony Snicket
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The fear. Of those ducks and other things.
